This is a design sketch for a new site delete action, to resolve a number of issues especially with community sites.

The main problem is that site admins have excessive power over contributors, and we have seen cases where a site admin has deleted a site, causing all contributors to lose their work.

We propose a solution based on the principle that the site is co-owned by all contributors, and they must all approve a radical change of content visibility. This covers:

Deleting the site

Making a public site private

By "contributor" we mean all identified users who have created or edited pages. We ignore comments on pages, forum posts and threads, and anonymous or (Account deleted) users.

Here is how a community would decide to delete a site:

Any contributor sees an action "Resign" in the page actions. This lets him/her resign from the site. If they are member, they cease being member. If they are admin, they cease being admin. If they are master admin, they cease being master admin, and that role passes to the most senior admin, moderator, member, or contributor, determined heuristically.

When all contributors have resigned from a site it will be automatically deleted. Any contributor can ask Wikidot to restore the site, but that becomes a manual process.

As long as at least one contributor does not agree to the site being deleted, it remains visible.

For making an existing site private, a similar process applies but using a second action, "Mask site".

The status of users (pro, free) has no impact on this. A pro user cannot destroy the work of others just because he/she paid Wikidot money.